In the days leading up to the June floods, I joined others in sandbagging efforts in Ottumwa and Iowa City and felt demoralized at times when it was clear our work could not save every home and business. However, few things have been as demoralizing as the response of federal officials in the aftermath of those widespread, destructive floods.
After the floods devastated so many Iowans' lives, I toured the hardest-hit communities with local leaders like Cedar Rapids City Councilman Chuck Wieneke, Mike Hodges in Oakville and city officials in Columbus Junction. I learned firsthand of the floods' impact on the National Czech & Slovak Museum and Library from board member Sue Plotz Olson and the University of Iowa from Ann Rosenthal, senior engineer in the Facilities Services Group.
Viewing these disaster areas was overwhelming and heart-wrenching, but it is nothing compared to the pain of our fellow Iowans who have lost so much of their lives and livelihoods. It was sobering to visualize the remnants of sandbags and all of our weeks of labor, and then the magnitude of the unbridled river which spanned almost eight miles in Oakville from its mouth at the Mississippi to where it actually emptied after the levee broke.
CEDAR RAPIDS, Jul 27, 2008 (The Gazette - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who has endorsed a plan to shift more than 20 percent of America's electric production from natural gas to wind power, said in a visit to Cedar Rapids last week that converting to homegrown energy sources is in the best interest of the nation's economy, environment and security
Miller-Meeks, an Ottumwa Republican challenging U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack
in Iowa's 2nd District, toured Clipper Windpower in Cedar Rapids on
Thursday, calling it an example of how Iowa and the nation benefit by
moving away from reliance on foreign oil.
"We have the capacity here, in our district, to bring wind power
online, create jobs and to make it profitable while creating jobs and
enhancing national security," she said.
Clipper officials told her there is adequate wind power potential in
the Upper Midwest to meet the nation's energy needs. A key to
increasing electricity from wind, however, is getting electricity from
wind turbine farms to the national transmission grid, Miller-Meeks said.
She called for a federal-state effort, similar to building the
interstate highway system, to build wind-farm-to-transmission-grid
access lines.
